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FOR the next two weeks, environment ministers from 192 nations
will batten down in the chilly Polish city of Poznan to confront
one big question: can politicians bridge the gap that separates
them from climate scientists over the action needed to avoid
dangerous climate change?

The Poznan talks are the second round of United Nations
negotiations aimed at getting a new global agreement on climate
change by the end of next year.

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, describes the
dilemma this way: scientists will say radical action is essential.
Political leaders will ask, is it possible?

On the eve of the talks, Australia's Climate Change Minister,
Penny Wong, ducked the question. Senator Wong reneged on a
long-standing promise to present Australia's 2020 target for
greenhouse gas cuts at Poznan, saying she would not announce the
target until she returned from the talks.

The Rudd Government is still wrangling over it. Several
ministers and officials want a weaker target than those proposed by
the Europeans and climate scientists. Environment groups had
threatened to condemn the Government if Senator Wong announced a
weak target.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, promised at climate talks in
Bali last December that Australia would take a leadership role in
climate negotiations. But his Government's failure to agree on a
2020 target before Poznan will undercut its position. "It's a
disappointment," said John Connor, chief executive of the Climate
Institute. "It definitely limits the role Australia can play."

No country has to sign up for commitments until the last round
of talks in Copenhagen next year. But Poznan is being closely
watched because it will reveal how ambitious politicians are
prepared to be to avoid dangerous climate change.

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States
has raised expectations, even though Bush Administration officials
will attend the talks as one of their last acts.

A recent UN report on the negotiations quoted the European
Union, Brazil and New Zealand as saying developed countries should
aim to cut their emissions by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020. Australia
agreed to examine this range of cuts last year in Bali.

European environment ministers insist such targets are needed in
developed countries. They say the new climate agreement must aim to
prevent the world's temperature rising 2 degrees.

To achieve this, the UN's peak scientific body advises that the
growth in world greenhouse gas emissions must stop in the next 10
to 15 years and be cut to half of 1990 levels by 2050.

The radical action proposed by the scientific advice is aimed at
keeping greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at or below
450 parts per million.

Unless developed countries take on ambitious 2020 targets,
negotiators will find it almost impossible to get the fastest
growing emitters, China and India, to commit to slowing their
greenhouse gas pollution. Rich nations will also be unlikely to
invest heavily in the clean technology China and India will need to
slow their emissions.

The scale of the energy revolution being proposed by Europe has
some business leaders in Australia deeply concerned.

But the investment needed could be 0.6 per cent of global gross
domestic product a year, the head of the International Energy
Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, said. The US spent 6 per cent of its GDP a
year on the military during the Cold War. In September the Rudd
Government's climate adviser, Ross Garnaut, concluded the world was
not ready to sign an ambitious global climate agreement that could
keep the temperature from rising less than 2 degrees.

This encouraged some inside and outside the Government to argue
Australia should lower its ambitions - offering to cut no more than
15 per cent of its emissions by 2020 and only 5 per cent if there
is no global agreement next year.

Publishing a new report called Clearing The Air, Mr
Connor said the investment needed for a "clean energy"
transformation in Australia was large but achievable - about $5
billion a year from now until 2020.

While the debate on the emissions targets will dominate the
talks in Poznan, ministers will also discuss how to reduce
emissions from deforestation, which make up a fifth of global
carbon dioxide emissions, and how much aid should be spent on
poorer countries trying to adapt to unavoidable climate change.